X-Files Recap: Mulder And Scully Get A Message From The Afterlife In This

January 11, 2018

Corrina

Say hello (again) to one of the three Lone Gunmen, Richard Langly, RIP (yes, we know that sentence has more than one contradiction in it). The Ramones fan and computer hacker genius reaches out to Mulder and Scully at the most unlikely time: 16 years after his own death. But just as the two agents are about to delve into why and how Langly could possibly be contacting them (via cellphone and from beyond the grave), a squad of humvees pulls up to Mulder’s house and a dozen Russian mercenaries spill out and begin shooting at them.

The intrusion is definitely a nuisance but Mulder and Scully handle it like the pros they are, taking out as many Russians as necessary to fight their way to freedom—and to Skinner, who they no longer trust. And for good reason: it’s unclear who Skinner’s currently working for, and when the ask him for access to the X-Files, they get a scrubbed down version that’s conveniently missing all the information they need. Luckily, Langly anticipated this—he left them a cheekily coded message that tells them exactly who to go talk to. Still, what the hell is up with Skinner?

Langly (and a bunch of other dead geniuses) have basically had their powerful brains uploaded to a server. A copy of Langly lives in this simulated world, and he hates it. The forces behind the project—including Erika Price, who we met last episode—call it evolution, the next (and only) way forward for a doomed species.

But Mulder and Scully (and Langly) aren’t as pessimistic. Life on a computer server isn’t life. Langly calls it a forced work camp and begs them to find it and shut it down. To that end, Mulder and Scully infiltrate the NSA’s Titanpointe building and fight their way to the server, taking out a dozen or so more Russian contractors on the way. Who is even working for who these days?

It seems like a clear victory in the end—there’s a pile of mercenaries dead or unconscious on the floor, the server has been shut down, and the FBI has been brought in to clean up the loose ends. But Mulder and Scully haven’t heard the last of Richard Langly—or his digital ghost, anyway. If you’re an evil syndicate bent on enslaving the minds of the world’s greatest thinkers on a computer server and forcing them to carry out your nefarious designs on the rest of humanity, you’re definitely going to have a backup server, right? Right.

Missed the season premiere on CTV? Catch it again January 12 at 9e 6p right here on Space.